Ambition

From an early age, Pip comes to understand how uneducated he is and how important education can be. Pip and Joe talk about what it is like to be common and how to become uncommon. Pip wants to be uncommon. When Pip begins going to Satis House and visiting with Miss Havisham, he becomes acutely aware of his poverty and his lack of education through the teasing and cruelty of Estella. For this reason, Pip’s desire to become more than just an uneducated blacksmith begins to overwhelm him. When he is apprenticed to Joe, he sees it as a dark time in his life and spends the next four years a miserable young man who has no means to better himself.

Pip learns about his anonymous benefactor and immediately jumps to the conclusion that Miss Havisham has decided to turn Pip into a gentleman so that he...